


A Special Kind of Art

by vials



Category: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Genre: Alternate Universe, I mean it could just slot in before the events of canon if you wanted it to, M/M, Pre-Canon, it's also angsty and dramatic because Bill Haydon, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 00:15:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10685823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vials/pseuds/vials
Summary: Bill is an art forger, and somehow, Jim has found himself in cahoots.





	A Special Kind of Art

It was extraordinary, watching Bill work. Jim had never thought himself a patient man until he had fallen into Bill’s rhythm himself, happy to let the time pass as he watched the other man paint. There was something about it that made it pass so quickly; the knowledge that the seemingly pointless actions would all add up to something incredible in the end, the way Bill stuck out his tongue ever so slightly as he worked, and how he would occasionally take several long strides away from the canvas as he tilted his head and looked at his work with an eye that Jim always thought was far too critical.

“You’re much too harsh on yourself,” Jim told him, countless time, and there would be a delay of several seconds before Bill replied, speaking as though he were coming from somewhere very far away.

“It’s not myself I’m being hard on,” he would say, and get back to painting. 

Because that was the thing about Bill Haydon – nothing was ever simple, and nothing was ever as it seemed. When they had first met Jim admitted that he had judged him: unfairly, he now knew. He had assumed that Bill was exactly like the rest of his type, because upon first glance he certainly fit the mark. Loud, confident, perhaps even _flashy_ ; the man oozed arrogance and knew everyone worth knowing. He flitted in and out of social situations as though he had every right to be there and every right he had – crowds seemed to part in front of him, rooms accepted him as their new centre. If somebody had told Jim, at the moment he had first laid eyes on Bill, that the man hated it, that he despised it beyond all belief, that the eyes on him made him want to tear off his skin and that he would like nothing better than to sink into blissful anonymity, Jim would have laughed in their faces. Bill Haydon was a natural socialite, the glue that held everything together. How could he possibly hate it? Such people were born to these things.

Jim had gotten to know Bill quickly after that, and quite well, too, he supposed. He hoped, anyway – sometimes he got the impression that no one truly knew Bill, least of all himself. Jim thought the man might get as close to it as he could only during times like these; just the two of them, Jim sitting quietly and Bill working on his next masterpiece, which would never be anything with his name attached to it and that was just how he liked it. Jim still sometimes had trouble working out just why Bill did it. Why put so much time and talent into something he would only falsely attribute to someone else? It didn’t make sense, and for all the re-writing Jim had done regarding Bill’s character, he still had issues thinking of Bill as the type to squander his talents onto people long dead.

“Why do you do it?” he asked once, on a night not unlike this one. He was desperate for a cigarette but Bill would never let him smoke around the paintings; it would soak into the canvas, he said, and reveal the picture as a fake. “Is it true that it’s the highest form of flattery? I don’t think it is, in your case. Weren’t you talking just the other day about how you can’t stand this artist?”

“It’s not about flattery,” Bill replied, narrowing his eyes slightly as he mixed paints, trying to get the precise shade of blue he needed. 

“So what is it about, then?” Jim prompted, when he got no further elaboration. “You spend days on these things. Weeks, sometimes. You get every detail right. You have incredible talent – for god’s sake, you can pass off your work as the work of some of the greatest painters in history! You can copy any style down to the last stroke. You’ve fooled experts and enthusiasts alike. I think if you came face to face with one of these fellows, you could convince even them that they had done the work, and they would gladly take the credit. I don’t understand why you want to hide it all away.”

“Because hiding it all away _is_ my talent, Jim,” Bill said, and looked at him with a kind smile that seemed almost tired. “I’m a good _forger_. Not an artist. There’s a difference. It’s copying. It’s just the act of copying. Really I could say that I’m just a fantastic liar with an eye for detail. It doesn’t mean I’ll be opening galleries in my own name, and to be quite honest with you, I can’t stand even the thought of it.”

Bill liked to be anonymous, Jim noticed. He liked to go out to places where people had less of a chance of recognising him; the two of them ambling down country lanes in Cornwall and Cumbria and Wales. Wherever they went, Bill’s family was sure to have a house or a cottage or a castle somewhere in the vicinity, but Bill sometimes took the mood to avoid even those places, and they would stay in boarding homes and bed and breakfasts, separate rooms that would cease to be singles once every light in the house was out. 

He liked the cold weather, where he could bundle up, a scarf high under his chin and his face angled down to keep out of the wind. Jim knew they had a look, these aristocratic types, but he hadn’t known enough of them to truly appreciate how obvious it was. Bill seemed to wear it like a hideous scar he had grown grudgingly used to; when it benefitted him he would flaunt it, using it to inspire trust in the art dealership world, assuring everyone that of course his family would naturally have such treasures in their possession, gifted to them from some old king, the name of which Bill would pull out of a hat sometimes hours before the showing, gleefully thinking of a fully-formed backstory sometimes with only minutes to go before he had to deliver it. 

When it didn’t benefit him he loathed it, the discomfort evident to anyone who bothered to know him. Jim saw it more and more these days, etched into every part of him; the slight turn of a frown at the corner of his mouth, the furrow in his eyebrows when someone stared for a beat too long. He only relaxed under Jim’s gaze, but that was usually because it was seconds before Jim would trace kisses up that same treacherous jawline, the one that gave people too much of Bill before he had the chance to stop it, and Bill would know that soon enough he wouldn’t have to think about it anymore.

“Are you not ever worried you’ll get caught?” Jim asked one night, when the usual plan hadn’t worked and Bill lay beside him, troubled now he had come down from the high, pretending he wasn’t while the whole time he hoped that Jim would give him an excuse to talk about it. Jim could read his moods like a book by now; Bill Haydon was nothing if he didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve.

“Why would I be worried?” Bill asked, scoffing. “What’s the worst that can happen? The police try and make a scene about something ridiculous, forgery or theft or whatever they’d like to call it, and my father pays everyone off and shuts them all up.” His voice wasn’t proud; quite the opposite. It dripped with disgust. “I suppose that kind of nonsense is going to follow me no matter where I go. My father’s influence always precedes mine; I suppose I ought to do something fun with it. It would be a shame if all it did was get me a first in a degree I worked my arse off for anyway. Not that anyone would notice that, of course.”

Moments like these made Jim’s heart ache for the man. The first time he had heard Bill ranting about something similar there had been a dark part of him that had almost wanted to snap at him, to tell him to shut up and to perhaps tell him the same thing that Bill was saying now – that that influence would be there whether Bill liked it or not, and if it was going to be there then he may as well do the decent thing and have some fun with it. Time and time again, Jim had been glad that he had said no such thing. He didn’t know what he would do with that weight on his conscience, hearing the way Bill came to the same conclusion. His voice dripped with venom; he looked positively disgusted with himself. Jim thought that the only time Bill ever looked ashamed of himself was when he spoke of his father’s influence.

“So why take the risk, then?” Jim asked, after the silence had dragged on a little too long. “Where’s the thrill?”

“The anonymity,” Bill said, because it always came back to that. “Don’t you understand, Jim? How fun it is, to have something in plain sight and have nobody know it’s you? It’s a reprise. It’s safe, hidden under the guise of a name that’s not mine.”

“Have you tried a pseudonym?” Jim asked, a small smile playing at the corner of his mouth, and Bill rolled over slightly and swatted at him.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Alright, I admit it, then. I like the scandal, if only a little.”

Jim hadn’t been surprised in the slightest to hear that. Anyone who had known Bill for more than five seconds would know that he practically lived for a good bit of scandal, and he wasn’t shy about whether or not the scandal had to come from him. It all seemed to be the same for Bill; Jim got the distinct impression that a part of Bill wanted to be caught, if only for the drama of it all. Perhaps Bill had a rose-coloured view of such a thing, and perhaps Bill had faith in his father’s influence to keep him out of prison, but Jim found himself concerned about something else entirely. He guessed that out of all his potential motivations, it was probably that one that made him begin to accompany Bill on his semi-frequent trips to locations across the country, acting at first as though he just wanted to see some of the sights and get an excuse to ride in a car as often as he did, because he would be lying if he said his jaw hadn’t practically hit the floor when he learned that Bill, barely out of boyhood, owned his own vehicle. It soon became about much more, however, and Jim found himself acting first as an extra helping hand, and then, to his sudden realisation and almost instantaneous amusement, as some kind of security.

“Did you know you’ve become my muscle?” Bill asked, a smile pulling at his lips as they drove down a winding lane somewhere in the middle of Suffolk. Jim stared out of the window at the flat countryside around him, reaching out to the horizon in an odd wavy sheen as the heat rose from the earth. 

“I think I must have noticed, at some point,” Jim said, before he laughed. “Christ. I do hope you never have the need of me.”

“I don’t know, I think it would be quite nice.”

“And why would that be?”

“I quite like the idea of you beating someone up in my defence,” Bill said, smiling properly now. “Especially when you and I both know that I’m in the wrong. Because I am, really, aren’t I?” Bill’s eyes glittered with the excitement of it all. “What would my father think? His only son, his heir, a crook? God, isn’t that enough to get you out of bed in the morning?”

“You’re going to get in trouble over this one day,” Jim warned, though he wasn’t just talking about the paintings and he knew Bill knew it. “This… this drive you have to screw your old man over. It’s going to lead you to dangerous places.”

“I know,” Bill said, and infuriatingly he did truly sound as though he had put a lot of serious thought into the matter.

“But you don’t care, do you?”

“Not particularly.”

“Do you not think it’s a waste?” Jim asked, hesitantly now. The road changed direction and the wind blowing across the fields came at the car from the side, suddenly whipping through the window in a cool, solid blast. Jim had to raise his voice to be heard over it. “If the only reason you do anything is to spite him, are you really doing anything for yourself?”

“I told you!” Bill called back. “I do it because I like the rush. I like the anonymity. I like to have the best of both worlds – everyone knowing that I’m talented but not knowing it’s me! If I have my way he’ll never find out, because if he does then how will I continue doing this? I like it! I don’t want him to know! It’s my secret. It’s our secret!”

Jim supposed he could be alright with that. Besides, Bill was amazing when he worked, no matter if he were creating or selling. Jim thought he could learn a thing or two from him, and privately he thought to himself that there was something of the spy around the man; the well-bred accent, the fine clothes that were nice enough to withstand scrutiny but not so nice they drew unnecessary attention, the fake names and false histories and the way he lied under pressure without breaking a sweat. He truly believed whatever it was he said to sell those pieces; he was truly passionate about whatever artist it was that his work was impersonating, because that was what Bill did – he didn’t copy masterpieces. No, that would be too simple to disprove. He created his own, in the style of the famed artist, and he perfected it to the extent that nobody could tell the difference, and no matter how many times Jim went over it in his head it was never any less brilliant. The first couple of times Jim had accompanied Bill on a sale or an evaluation his heart had been in his throat and he had been glad that his role in the proceedings hadn’t given cause for him to have to shake any hands, so sweaty his palms were. By the third time he had plenty of faith in Bill’s abilities; he had seen the man’s work fool experts with magnifying glasses and years of experience and endless questions, and he knew that Bill would never put forward a work he wasn’t one hundred per cent pleased with. He would get away with it every time, Jim knew. There was no doubt about it.

“You’re a mess of secrets,” he told Bill one night, during another lull in Bill’s painting where he stood back and examined it from a distance, tilting his head this way and that and spotting tiny imperfections that Jim couldn’t even begin to name. “I don’t think there’s a single part of you that isn’t caught up in something secret.”

“On the contrary,” Bill said, rubbing at his face and leaving a small smear of crimson paint there. “I think parts of me are far too open.”

“Maybe,” Jim said. “But those parts aren’t as important as the rest. Not for you. For example, you don’t give a shit about being aristocratic, so you never bother to hide it or draw attention to it. It’s just there. But the things you do care about? That’s what you keep secret, isn’t it? Even to yourself.”

Bill snorted. “I’m supposed to be the artist, Jim. What’s with the poetic speech?”

“I suppose you just bring it out in me,” Jim said, smiling, though he noted the fact that Bill had evaded the question.

Jim was right, of course. Jim was always right about these things, much to Bill’s annoyance. Despite what Bill thought, Jim didn’t often take pleasure in being right, especially not when it came to this. In fact, half of the time he wished he had never been proven such, and he had never wished it more than he did when he walked into Bill’s rooms that Christmas season, not really expecting him to be there.

Bill’s studio was elsewhere, a decent drive away from the university and housed in what Jim was convinced was an abandoned factory that Bill somehow had the use of, probably through paying the owner some form of rent. It was an impressive and secretive place, and Jim was glad for it now. Bill had obviously returned early from the holidays, because Jim found him standing in the middle of his room, unaware that Jim was even there. He hadn’t had to knock, the door being wide open and held there by an overturned chair, and the rest of the room hadn’t fared much better. Perhaps most devastating was the fact that several of his works in progress – his _own_ works, Jim remembered, not meant to be anyone else’s but his – were completely ruined, covered in harsh scribbles of paint or ripped from the canvas entirely.

Bill stood in the middle of the whole mess, his hands clenched into tight fists by his sides. Jim could see him shaking from the doorway.

For perhaps the first time in his life, Jim was afraid. Not scared, because that was something different altogether, but _afraid_. It was a specific kind of fear that was born from uncertainly, from seeing something so _unnatural_ that his mind simply couldn’t make sense of it. Bill was emotional, Jim knew that. Bill was dramatic, and Bill loved to cause a scene. But that was precisely the problem. For whose benefit was Bill causing _this_ scene? There was no possible way that he could have known anyone would stumble across him, and the rest of the building was silent and unoccupied. The realisation slowly dawned on Jim that this hadn’t been a scene at all; that he had been right, that this was simply an expression of everything he knew Bill kept locked up, and Jim felt guilty for having seen it.

He was about to back up and leave. He swore it to himself – he was. He could be very quiet when he wanted to be, despite his large frame; he was going to take several soft steps backwards, out of view of the door, and then he was going to turn and leave and not let Bill know what he had seen. Unfortunately for the both of them, that was precisely when Jim noticed something, dripping irregularly at first and then at an alarming rate onto the wooden floor at Bill’s feet. 

No paint had been spilled on that part of the floor, but it was red. Jim knew it was blood as soon as he saw it, but again his mind struggled to comprehend what he was seeing. He could see no visible injuries on Bill, not where he expected to see them, anyway. His hands seemed the most likely place and they appeared fine. But the blood was still coming, splattering the floor in a growing puddle, and Bill hadn’t seemed to notice.

“Bill.”

His name had left Jim’s mouth before he could stop it, and for a moment he wondered if he had said it out loud after all. Bill didn’t react at first, and Jim thought that maybe he really had just thought about it, but then he saw Bill’s hand twitch and the man hunched slightly as though in defence, and Jim remembered just why it was that he had wanted to leave. He supposed it was too late; leaving now would only make the situation worse.

“You’re bleeding,” he added, to assure Bill that he really wasn’t concerned with everything else. 

“Oh,” Bill said, and his voice had the rawness of someone who had been crying, or shouting, or both.

“Are you hurt?”

“No,” Bill said, and Jim was just about to tell him to stop lying when he turned around, now wiping at his face with his arm, his fingers keeping the sleeve down. When he moved his arm away Jim saw that the blood was coming from his nose, and that there was a lot of it; it covered the sleeve of Bill’s jacket and left a large smear across one side of his face, and even seconds after Bill had wiped his nose, more blood appeared. “This happens sometimes. It’s a stress thing. Really nothing to be concerned about.”

“If you say so,” Jim said, trying not to stare. “At least try and stop it, though. You don’t want to get light-headed.”

“No,” Bill said, so distantly that Jim wondered if it might be too late. “No, I suppose I don’t.”

Abruptly Bill sat on the floor. After a moment’s hesitation, Jim entered the room properly and sat down next to him. For a long while they sat there, pressed together, their backs against the bed and Bill leaning his head right back against the mattress, looking up at the ceiling as he pinched the bridge of his nose with one hand.

“So it just starts bleeding?” Jim asked, once Bill’s breathing told him that the bleeding had begun to calm.

“Apparently,” Bill answered. “It’s done this since I was a child. Stopped for a while when I hit my teen years and we all hoped I’d grown out of it, but apparently not. Oh well. I suppose it’s better than it used to be. Now it’s just stress, when before it was anything that got me excited in any way. Made birthday celebrations very interesting.”

“I suppose it also served as a good excuse to get out of things, huh?” Jim asked, smiling though Bill wasn’t looking at him. “I doubt your parents would have thought it proper that you were sitting at the dinner table dripping blood into everything.”

“Oh, they soon caught on to what I was doing,” Bill said, wiping at his nose again. He sighed and lifted his head up, pausing cautiously for a moment until he saw his nose wasn’t going to immediately start gushing blood again. “I suppose you’re wondering what all this mess is about?” he added, his voice a tight version of his business tone, the one he used when he was going to force himself through a discussion he didn’t really want to have.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Jim said, sincerely, because while he was curious he didn’t think he could bear to hear Bill drag the words out of himself. Bill was stubborn, though; he should have known he needn’t have bothered.

“I know I don’t have to,” Bill said, clearing his throat. “I would just rather you know what was really the matter than try to fill in the blanks yourself. If I’m going to be caught out being pathetic, I would rather you know the truth behind it.”

“You don’t have to put yourself down so much, Bill,” Jim said, his voice oddly gentle, and he tried to stop himself from doing it, tried to stop himself from seeing Bill like some kind of fragile bird, broken and delicate and susceptible to further harm from the slightest thing. “I don’t think that anything that would make you this troubled would be pathetic, and this is just how you deal with things. At least you have the good decency to go and do it privately. It isn’t your fault that I showed up.”

“I suppose,” Bill said, but he didn’t sound convinced. “Christ, Jim. How do you do it? You spent all these years growing up outside of Britain and yet you’ve got an upper lip so stiff members of my own family would die for it. How the _bloody hell_ do you do it?”

“I’m not one of those artsy types,” Jim said, grinning, and Bill gave him a brave smile but Jim noticed his eyes dampen. “Christ, Bill. You’re worrying me now. What’s the matter, then?”

“It all sounds very juvenile,” Bill began, pausing uncharacteristically and looking for a moment like he was worried. He shook most of it off after a second, though Jim could still see a shadow of it on his features. “But you have to understand that when it goes on for as long as this, it starts to drive you insane. When something grates on you, constantly, incessantly… surely it’s only natural that something will break?”

“I imagine so,” Jim agreed.

“It still sounds stupid, no matter how the hell I try and dress it up,” Bill said, sighing again. “I went home over Christmas, you see.”

“You did mention it.”

“And like always, it didn’t go well. I don’t understand it, Jim. I don’t understand how he can hate me the way he does.”

“Hate you? Who?”

“My blasted father, that’s who.”

“Ah. Yes. That does raise questions.”

“I really thought that we would be over this by now, that maybe he would have learned to live with me or I would have gotten over it,” Bill said, letting his head flop back against the mattress. “And do you know something? I really think I might have been able to do it, if he wasn’t so bloody incessant about it. I think if we just left one another alone, we would be much better off. I would be perfectly alright with that, to be honest, because I can’t say it’s a bundle of laughs, things being this way. But he’s incapable of it. He picks at me, you know that? Just pick, pick, picks, until I finally have enough and start the argument that he wants. And it’s useless trying to ignore him because I’ve never met a more stubborn bastard in my entire life. You’d think me being his only son would make him sit down and cut his losses but apparently not.”

“I don’t think I know a man alive who gets on with his father, Bill,” Jim said, before he gave a thin smile. “Though, I must admit, yours does really seem to have a vendetta against you.”

“It is because of the artsy stuff, you know,” Bill said, shaking his head, still staring up at the ceiling. He looked a sorry sight, Jim thought, noticing how Bill’s cheeks were slightly puffy, clearly still damp, the blood from his nose still drying on his face. “Well, not _entirely_ because of that, he’s always hated me. But I think the artsy stuff was the cherry on top. I think that was what did it, once and for all. It’s such a bloody stupid thing – I don’t believe for a moment that I’m going to make a _career_ out of it, and I wouldn’t want to! It’s a hobby, nothing more than that. But apparently a man isn’t allowed to have any hobbies if they’re too _homosexual_ in nature.”

At that, Jim let out an audible laugh; even Bill was smiling slightly, he noticed.

“I think you do things a little more homosexual than painting, to be honest,” he said.

“Try telling my father that. He thinks it’s all the same thing. I pick up a paintbrush in that house and it’s like I’ve got a cock up my arse right there in the middle of dinner. God, sometimes I think I may as well. If it’s all the bloody same to him.”

“I would really recommend not doing that, Bill.”

“I would, just for the badness of it.” Bill smiled for a moment and then it faded; shaking his head again, he brought his hands up and covered his face with them. “Christ,” he mumbled through his fingers. “I’ve made a real mess of the place.”

“It’s a shame about your work,” Jim said, not wanting to look at it all again. 

“It was all absolute rubbish anyway,” Bill said dismissively. “Really it was a favour to myself, Jim. I couldn’t have saved them. I’ll just start again, I suppose.”

There were a million things that Jim wanted to say, but he couldn’t find the words for them. It all sounded too cliché; too emotional. He wanted to tell Bill to stop being ridiculous, he wanted to grab him and shake him until the infuriating man realised the kind of talent he possessed. He wanted to do anything he could to repair the damage that had been done to Bill in all the years before he had known him, even though Jim knew that such a thought was pointless and inherently selfish, when he thought about it. As if he could fix a problem as complex as this.

But by god, he wanted to try.

Instead he settled for reaching over and giving Bill a gentle punch on the shoulder, and thankfully, Bill seemed to know what he meant. 

“Are you actually going to start again?” Jim asked, after a few more moments of silence, and Bill let out a snort and then a curse as it resulted in more blood dripping down his face.

“Probably not. We’ll count it as a new slate.”

Perhaps Bill had meant it, truly, at the time. Jim thought he probably had. It didn’t change the fact that it seemed as though Bill had temporarily given up on his original artistic endeavours, instead spending every spare moment he had in his makeshift studio in the old warehouses. Jim worried that Bill might not be as over it all as he pretended he was; even to Jim’s untrained eye, Bill’s work was sloppy. Twice already he had to stop him from trying to pass off inadequate works as authentic, and most frighteningly of all, Bill didn’t seem shocked or worried about the near misses, not in the slightest.

“You’re going to get yourself into trouble,” Jim warned one cold evening, sitting huddled in a thick jacket as Bill painted, almost rigid with cold due to his insistence he only wear his shirtsleeves. “You’re getting cocky. Reckless, even. I thought this was supposed to be enjoyable? Your little secret, your little fuck you?”

“It is,” Bill muttered, and Jim didn’t know if his clenched teeth were due to the cold or something else entirely. 

“Then be _careful_ ,” Jim told him, and Bill was, for a while, until he wasn’t anymore. 

Jim would never truly know how Bill avoided a scandal too big for even him to enjoy. He supposed it was a combination of luck, Bill’s ability to lie on the spot, some decent faked documents, and Jim’s presence. Really Jim was probably the key to it all, because had it not been for him he was thoroughly convinced that Bill would have probably ended up dead. He still wasn’t entirely sure of the details – just that someone had grown suspicious of the forgeries, and instead of taking it to law enforcement, they had simply decided to settle matters a little more physically. Jim supposed that in a way, that was a good thing. Had the police actually been involved, they wouldn’t have stood a chance.

He knew something was up immediately, because the person they had supposed to be dealing with never sent more than one person to the exchange. They had never met in person (another stroke of luck) but the buyer had only ever sent a single person, not three, and they usually didn’t look so mean. Still, by the time they had seen them it was already too late; to turn and run now would have been useless, not to mention confirmed their guilt. Jim hoped that Bill would be able to talk them out of it, but it seemed these people were not interested in talking.

Thankfully they only got one punch in before Jim was on them. Unfortunately said punch connected with Bill’s jaw, easily knocking him to the ground and, if Jim’s suspicions were correct, probably unconscious to boot. He would have liked the time to check, but there wasn’t any of that; acting more on instinct than anything else, Jim struck out at the closest attacker and managed to hit him square in the face, sending him stumbling into the road and momentarily out of the way. 

The men would have probably been the end of Bill, but Jim quickly noticed that they were more fat than muscle, their size to intimidate rather than for any extreme physical strength. Jim, however, had years of rugby behind him and frequently went up against men his own size or greater; really a bit of beer gut was nothing to worry about. He couldn’t remember if he had scored any kind of decisive win, or if the commotion had just unnerved the assailants and they had fled before someone could call for the police, but whatever happened left them alone, Bill with a rapidly bruising jaw and Jim with a bloody lip, some split knuckles, and a sense of complete unsurprise.

“Well,” he said, offering Bill a hand when he saw the man was conscious. He hauled him upright with a slight twinge in his elbow, but it didn’t feel as though it were anything too serious. “You can’t honestly tell me you didn’t know that was coming at some point.”

“Actually,” Bill said, wincing and touching at his jaw. It was several seconds before he spoke again, his voice distorted as he tried not to move his mouth too much. “I thought it would be a case of dealing with the police rather than some goons. Thank god you were here.”

“Thank god indeed,” Jim said, making sure Bill was steady on his feet before letting go of his arm and brushing himself down. “They would probably have killed you. Now quickly, we need to get out of here. You probably have some covering up to do.”

Word spread quickly, Jim knew, and this was no exception. Within a few days Bill had had to close up shop, hiding everything away in various locations and waiting for the scandal to stop sweeping through the art circles. A couple of times the fire touched close to him; he extinguished it with sincere lies and, when necessity called for it, a story about how some of his identification had been stolen, collateral damage along with his cash one night when he’d had too much to drink and wandered into some nasty opportunists, and perhaps the thief had been involved somehow and that was why his likeness had come up. His bruised face certainly gave credit to the story, and gradually the heat died down, though Bill was thankfully not stupid enough to think he could go back to it.

“I’m quitting that line of work,” he announced one evening, sitting cross-legged on Jim’s bed with a sketchbook. Leaning over slightly, Jim noticed the man was drawing some very rude caricatures of their classmates, which, while unflattering, were certainly accurate. “It’s a shame, really, considering I rather enjoyed it. But a good businessman always knows when it’s time to jump ship.”

“You mean you just don’t want to go to prison for fraud,” Jim put in helpfully, and Bill smiled, still sketching.

“I think that counts as a reason to jump ship, don’t you?”

“I suppose so. Aren’t you going to miss it?”

“Maybe. A little, perhaps. But I think I might have found something else to do instead.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I won’t bore you with the details now. We’ll see how it all pans out. Besides,” Bill added, now grinning at Jim with something devilish in his eyes; combined with the shadowed bruises along his jawline, it made for an impressive sight. “Did I tell you I think my father knows? And I think he is _infuriated_ that he won’t be able to pin it on me and disinherit me once and for all. I think that’s also plenty of reason to stay on the straight and narrow for now.”

“You could not stay on the straight and narrow if you tried,” Jim said, returning the smile, and when Bill laughed he sounded a little like himself again.


End file.
